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Smart city initiatives have become inseparable from the modern development of urban environments. Scholars have characterized smart cities as complex and emergent environments and many attempts have been made to create a framework for the enabling factors of smart processes. In this research in progress paper, we aim to contribute to this particular conversation by presenting findings from theoretical and empirical research. Through a systematic literature review we propose a comprehensive ensemble of enabler factors for Smart Cities and determine future directions for scholars and practitioners. Then, we leverage preliminary findings emerging from a research in progress in the Dublin Docklands to draw conclusions about the current understanding of the concept in question. We argue, based on preliminary results, that there must be equal emphasis on the interconnected and process-based nature of the enabling factors, i. e. on the value creation potential of the smart city.

Information Systems research on Open Data has been primarily focused on its contribution to e-government inquiries, government transparency, and open government. Recently, Open Data has been explored as a catalyser for service innovation as a consequence of big claims around the potential of such initiatives in terms of additional value that can be injected into the worldwide economy. Subsequently, the Open Data Services academic conversation was structured (Lindman et al. 2013a). The research project presented in this paper is an interpretive case study that was carried out to explore the factors that influence the diffusion of Open Data for new service development. This paper contributes to this debate by providing an interpretive inductive case study (Walsham 1995) of a tourism company that successfully turned several city authorities’ raw open datasets into a set of valuable services. Results demonstrate that 16 factors and 68 related variables are the most relevant in the process of diffusion of open data for new service development. Furthermore, this paper demonstrates the suitability of Social Constructionism and interpretive case study research to inductively generate knowledge in this field.

In this paper Smart City initiatives will be explored from the perspective of the enabler factors required for such intitiatives to be successful. In detail, we see smart cities made of five collectively exhaustive dimensions, i.e. Technology, Social Infrastructure, People-Private-Public Partnerships, Governance and Management, and Smart Information Services. Thus, after a brief introduction of the domain of analysis, the starting point will be a systematic review of the literature. Then we will describe each perspective explaining why and how it has to be considered. Finally we will propose some discussions, in particular around the applicability of our framework for embedded assessment and measurement tools (e.g. Balanced Scorecard).

Information Systems research on Open Data has been primarily focused on its contribution to e-government inquiries, government transparency, and open government. Recently, Open Data has been explored as a catalyser for service innovation as a consequence of big claims around the potential of such initiatives in terms of additional value that can be injected into the worldwide economy. Subsequently, the Open Data Services academic conversation was structured (Lindman et al. 2013a). The research project presented in this paper is an interpretive case study that was carried out to explore the factors that influence the diffusion of Open Data Services. This paper contributes to this debate by providing both a systematic literature review study that structures research efforts available to date in this topic, and an interpretive case study (Walsham, 1995) of a successful initiative that turned several city authorities’ raw open datasets into a set of valuable services. Results demonstrate that 12 factors and 56 related variables are the most relevant in the process of diffusion of open data for new service development. Furthermore, this paper demonstrates the suitability of Social Constructionism and interpretive case study research to inductively generate knowledge in this field.

City councils produce large amounts of data. As this data becomes available, and as information and communication technology capabilities are in place to manage and exploit this data, open government data is seen as becoming more and more valuable as a catalyst for service innovation and economic growth. Notwithstanding this, evidence of open data adoption is currently largely scattered and anecdotal. This is reflected in the lack of literature focusing on users of open data for commercial purposes. This research aims to address this gap and contributes to the IS open data services debate by proposing a model of factors perceived by an open data services business as the most relevant in explaining adoption of open government data for commercial service innovation in cities. Adopting an inductive reasoning approach through qualitative methods was critical to capture the complexity of the open data services ecosystem perceived by those reusing this data.

The research project presented in this paper is being conducted in collaboration with Dublin City Council and Intel Corporation, and is focused on the development of a Smart City maturity model. This paper focuses on the research methodology that is being used for this study, i.e. Action Design Research (Sein et al. 2011). Particularly, we will describe why this recently proposed methodology is suitable for our research, in comparison with Design Science Research (March and Smith, 1995; Hevner et al. 2004) and Action Research (Baburoglu and Ravn, 1992). Furthermore, we will focus on the problem formulation stage to systematically investigate the topic. A systematic literature review based on the 8-steps method proposed in (Okoli et al. 2010) is presented to explore the factors required to evaluate the environmental and socioeconomic sustainability impact of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions at a city level. Furthermore, Grounded Theory principles were adopted to structure the Smart City ecosystem, and identify the areas in which ICT-enabled services have an impact on the city’s social, environmental, and economical performances.